WhatsApp has been testing a few additional features to its iOS app with the ability to “view once” photos and videos sent as well a new redesigned in-app notification.
According to always reliable WABetaInfo, after rolling out this feature for Android beta testers recently, WhatsApp is finally making the “view once” feature available for iOS beta users with version 2.21.140.9.
With this feature available, users will be able to use the Snapchat-like feature to send photos and videos that destroy themselves after being seen. Although different from Snapchat, WhatsApp won’t say whether someone took a screenshot or not.
The app won’t warn people, according to WABetaInfo, because there’s no safe way to make sure a screenshot hasn’t been taken, as there are several ways to bypass that.
If you’re a WhatsApp beta tester, after updating the app from the TestFlight, try to send a photo or a video to see if the new feature is already available for you.
When you send the media, it already disappears from your mobile phone and it will also disappear in the recipient’s phone when he opens it once. You are notified when the recipient opens the photo/video because the bubble message will report “Opened”.
Other details, like who opened your photo/video, are available in Message Info.
Another feature rolling out in this beta version is a new redesigned in-app notification. With this update, users can now see more details in the notification banner as images, videos, GIFs, and stickers.
The user can now expand the in-app notification in order to show the chat preview: the chat preview is not static like the one that appears when you peek on a chat cell, so the user can scroll up and down the view to see older and newer messages.
Although the in-app notification has been redesigned, WhatsApp says that if you read a message through it, it’ll not count as “read,” as you need to open the chat normally.
It’s still not clear when the app will release these features publicly but as they are being made available for beta testers, it shouldn’t take long.
Author: José Adorno
Source: 9TO5Google
